'The College Backlash is a Mirage' (msn.com) 93
Public opinion surveys paint a picture of Americans souring dramatically on higher education, as Pew found that the share of adults calling college "very important" dropped from 70% in 2013 to just 35% today, and NBC polling shows that 63% now believe a degree is "not worth the cost," up from 40% over the same period. Yet enrollment data tells a different story.
Four-year institutions awarded 2 million bachelor's degrees in 2023, up from 1.6 million in 2010, and the fraction of 25-year-olds holding a bachelor's degree has steadily increased for the past 15 years. The economic case remains strong. The average bachelor's degree holder earns about 70% more than a high-school graduate of similar work experience, and after factoring in financial aid, the cost of attending a public four-year college has fallen by more than 20% since 2015.
Even after accounting for student-debt payments, college graduates net about $8,000 more annually than those without degrees. Part of the disconnect may stem from misunderstanding how college pricing works. Nearly half of U.S. adults believe everyone pays the same tuition, though fewer than 20% of families actually pay the published sticker price.
Four-year institutions awarded 2 million bachelor's degrees in 2023, up from 1.6 million in 2010, and the fraction of 25-year-olds holding a bachelor's degree has steadily increased for the past 15 years. The economic case remains strong. The average bachelor's degree holder earns about 70% more than a high-school graduate of similar work experience, and after factoring in financial aid, the cost of attending a public four-year college has fallen by more than 20% since 2015.
Even after accounting for student-debt payments, college graduates net about $8,000 more annually than those without degrees. Part of the disconnect may stem from misunderstanding how college pricing works. Nearly half of U.S. adults believe everyone pays the same tuition, though fewer than 20% of families actually pay the published sticker price.
You'd be reconsidering options too (Score:3)
While we can argue the reasons, it's clear this isn't the world we grew up in.
Why would you do what worked 50 years ago, today, and expect it will work?
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.. given the economic climate.
While we can argue the reasons, it's clear this isn't the world we grew up in.
Why would you do what worked 50 years ago, today, and expect it will work?
Technological advances, and especially the rise of the Internet, probably helps. I got my BSCS in 1987 and back then people didn't really have home internet, and if they did, it was dial-up so it was *super* slow - you youngsters probably can't even imagine a 56k baud dial-up modem, much less a 300 baud modem (which I've used) and just an ASCII terminal. In addition, the IBM PC only came out around 1981, and it wasn't cheap. While there where other "home" systems, like the TRS-80, they weren't ubiquito
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Why would you do what worked 50 years ago, today, and expect it will work?
The data shows that college improves your options and your income now. Who cares what effect it had 50 years ago?
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The data shows that college improves your options and your income now. Who cares what effect it had 50 years ago?
The data shows that the people now a few years into their career are $8k a year better off than high school grads. Given that some of those careers will be earning silly amounts of money (doctors, lawyers, financial analysts using graduate level math), the outcome for those in more ordinary careers is likely to be marginal or negative overall.
Add in the fact that kids are making the decision to go or not on the basis of predictions of how things will be in the jobs market in five years time, the case for go
that's not how that works (Score:2)
People can be enrolling even though they don't think it's worth it because they don't know what else to do.
What a waste of an article
This isn't an article, it's an Opinion piece (Score:4, Interesting)
It's copied from The Atlantic, and right away, the opinion author's assertions run into trouble.
"For the overwhelming majority of graduates, the returns on going to college more than offset the cost of tuition. ". That's news to all the grads drowning in debt they'll never pay off.
"After factoring in financial aid, the cost of attending a public four-year college has fallen by more than 20 percent since 2015, even before adjusting for inflation." What? Seriously?
Many more things like that. And she never even addresses the issue of enrollment now being overwhelmingly female, with majors that are money losers in the job markets. Nor does she address the fact that a growing number of students are foreign, sent here by their families or governments to gain technical and business knowledge to take back home after graduation. The whole thing reads like a PR piece for colleges.
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The point about foreign students is a good one. Colleges can be granting more degrees in total, but still have falling domestic enrollment.
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> a growing number of students are foreign
One of greatest export businesses; it brings in significant revenue and subsidizes college for many.
The current administrations is working to destroy it, of course.
https://www.brookings.edu/arti... [brookings.edu]
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I remember when I was headed off to college fortymumble years ago. The cost was sane and didn't need this kind of subsidy. The quality was almost certainly better, too.
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The demand for advanced education was there; we chose to become the supplier instead of letting someone do it.
The US became the center where the best and brightest got together. Also, a significant number of those best and brightest stayed here.
We're about to see how well isolationism works, mixed in the last gasps of a militarily powerful but increasingly corrupt empire.
It's not going to be pretty.
Re:This isn't an article, it's an Opinion piece (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, great fucking idea: let's make other countries more competitive.
There are good universities outside of the US. If the US stops admitting as many foreign students, they will still get just as educated. They will just get educated in foreign universities. Those universities will grow and improve to meet demand, because that is how capitalism works.
We aren't making other countries more competitive. We are taking advantage of their drive to become more competitive. It is overwhelmingly a net benefit for the US.
Re:This isn't an article, it's an Opinion piece (Score:5, Interesting)
There are good universities outside of the US. If the US stops admitting as many foreign students, they will still get just as educated. They will just get educated in foreign universities. Those universities will grow and improve to meet demand, because that is how capitalism works.
The big challenge in this idea of non-US universities absorbing the students that previously might have attended US universities is that outside the US, universities don't operate on a capitalist system with supply-demand mechanisms. The US is unique in allowing many universities on many different levels to exist. Degrees from the top 150 universities can all find jobs, and often degrees from other universities can also find jobs. Universities can expand rapidly and compete with each other. Private universities can and have been created in every state. Students can "fail" high school or college entrance exams and still find a decent school to attend, either straight out of high school or even later on in life. In states like California, there are reserved slots for community college students to transfer to the top UC schools.
This is not true in most of the world. In most Asian and European countries, there are a limited number of universities, and there is a single exam that gates entrance to those universities. In a very real sense, these universities pride themselves on the scarcity of their enrollment slots. They will fight to maintain that exclusivity. There is no chance that those countries will expand enrollment in their decent universities. Even in China where the number of students is huge, the urge to expand enrollment at the decent universities is strongly resisted, and China is not unique in that regard.
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Even in China where the number of students is huge, the urge to expand enrollment at the decent universities is strongly resisted, and China is not unique in that regard
Don't know what numbers you are looking at, but China has more than doubled its number of universities in the last 24 years and has an enrollment rate that is likely higher than in the U.S. Sure, the elite in China want to limit access to the "top" institutions, just like the elite in the U.S. want, too. But the overall quality of the average Chinese college has improved dramatically and as a system they educate way more students than in the U.S.
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Donald Trump is happy to screw any industry over xenophobia except real-estate, oil, and makers of gold doilies.
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The quality was almost certainly better, too
Define "quality"? I'd happily pit a randomly selected college grad from 2026 against a randomly selected college grad from 1986 (from the same major, and assuming we can time-warp back to 1986 so this isn't counting 40-odd years of additional life & work experience) in a knowledge and skills test; I'd put my money on the 2026 grad every time.
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They had to re-norm the goddamn SAT down at least once since I took it in the early 80s, did you know that? My daughter is a high school senior in a highly rated high school district, and her coursework is a joke compared to what I had to do in similar honors classes. My son is stunned by the ignorance of his college peers.
I was in competitive forensics in high school--said school no longer has a debate team. In 1983 the Lincoln-Douglas debate topic was on the public
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I'd have to agree, based on just a single anecdote - my own daughter. I had never heard of remedial classes for college students in my day. Just didn't exist. But my daughter ended up *teaching* them (kind of like a TA) while she was going to college. And teaching them in High School [she went to Derryfield, a private HS, that was basically a junior college more than a HS. Great folks there BTW and excellent school].
How big a sh**show does it have to be to need remedial classes for incoming freshmen?
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UCSD has to offer middle-school math classes to freshmen [san.com]
UCSD is currently ranked by US News (I know, I know) at #21 in the global rankings!
Re:This isn't an article, it's an Opinion piece (Score:4, Insightful)
It's talking about an average. Some loan takers fall through the cracks, usually because either they cannot find a job that takes advantage of their degree, and/or because they took on an unrealistic amount of debt. Often one's ego writes checks the Bank of Reality can't cover.
Ignoring that this comes across misogynistic, many women choose fields that they feel directly help people or society even if the paychecks are skimpy. But this doesn't mean they are necessarily taking on lots of debt. An analysis of the biggest defaulters and pay-off times would be necessary before laying the blame on such degrees. We shouldn't just presume careers that pay less are the biggest source of loan problems.
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But perhaps people take out loan sizes based on what they expect to earn in their field. For example, an engineering masters degree is expected to result in a relatively high salary, so one may request a big loan.
There are already common work-sheets to compute recommended loan level based on wage and employment statistics in various fields. If somebody is foolish enough to ignore su
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The worst loans come from private lenders. You are proposing regulations on them.
Re: This isn't an article, it's an Opinion piece (Score:2)
Don't think 2.05% makes that much a difference? Then why would the President be complaining about interest rates?
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many women choose fields that they feel directly help people or society even if the paychecks are skimpy. But this doesn't mean they are necessarily taking on lots of debt.
They probably are, because you need a fucking master's to be a social worker.
You only need the equivalent of a 2 year degree to be a nurse, but that's also a shitty job. The nurses I know were considering quitting because the hospitals weren't protecting them, and they were getting attacked by patients. So then if they want to do something else, it's back to school.
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And, ironically, back in the mid 1980s... I'd have had about 15K in debt. Less than today's 30K.
Not really. Some random website with an inflation calculator says $15k in 1985 would be about $45k in 2025, significantly more than today's $30k.
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Re: This isn't an article, it's an Opinion piece (Score:2)
Re:This isn't an article, it's an Opinion piece (Score:5, Informative)
This article was written to teach people like you that your beliefs are wrong.
I am sure there are graduates drowning in debt, but this article is saying they are in the minority, not the majority. Your belief they are wrong is not backed up by data, the article stating you are wrong is backed up by data.
Yes seriously - the cost is DOWN over the past 20 years because loans are being replaced by gifts. At least for the smarter students.
Enrollment is 58% female. Only a sexist moron would think this is 'overwhelmingly female.' 50 years (in 1980) it was equal, before that the men outnumbered woman. 50 years before that it was more than 58% male.
Majors are not money losers - not for men, nor women. People are not as stupid as you think they are.
Here are the most popular college majors.
https://www.coursera.org/artic... [coursera.org]
The worst 15% are not profitable. So is psychology , # 5 on the list - but that only applies to people that get a Psych degree and no further training. Most people that want a psych degree also want to become a pyschologist or psychiatrist, which require a graduate degree and go on to be very profitable.
As for the foreigners - up until last year those foreigners WANTED TO STAY IN THE USA.
Suddenly they no longer want to do that, but that is likely to change in another 3 years. Before 2024, about 20% of foreign graduate students stayed in the US. The number goes up to 40% for those that get graduate students.
Your personal political beliefs prevented you from believing an article that was clearly designed to teach you that your beliefs are wrong.
But the facts do not give care about your feelings.
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"If you want to study the effects on underwater basket weaving on indigenous gender fluid mollusks....then you pay for it on your own time. I think that might cut a LOT of waste out.....let's try to only train for things that will benefit society and make the student some money after school." Can you say "clueless"? I didn't think so. You're repeating an old saw that wasn't true then, and isn't true now.
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$8000 per year is only a bit more than 2.5 months worth of rent at this point. We also have the problem where getting ahead in any job field has become more difficult due to companies not placing enough value on employees who actually understand the products/services being offered. Yea, some asshole with a business degree is in charge, but has zero understanding of the products/services the company makes, and you end up with a wall for those who have an education in something practical.
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"For the overwhelming majority of graduates, the returns on going to college more than offset the cost of tuition. ". That's news to all the grads drowning in debt they'll never pay off."
Is it? If 20% of graduates are drowning debt they will never pay off, it could still be the case that the overwhelming majority see positive returns. But the statistics on defaulted student loans show a huge portion of the defaults come from students who never completed their degree (especially from for-profit schools).
""Af
Re: This isn't an article, it's an Opinion piece (Score:2)
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A subset of graduates are (most notably those who went to for-profit colleges).
Both things can be true: 1) An overwhelming majority are not drowning in debt, 2) There are former students who are drowning in debt. An overwhelming majority is not "all" or even "substantially all".
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"For the overwhelming majority of graduates, the returns on going to college more than offset the cost of tuition. ". That's news to all the grads drowning in debt they'll never pay off.
It said the overwhelming majority of graduates get a positive return on their education, which is still true. The studies I've read have concluded between 60-80% of college degree recipients earn more than they would have without a degree after compensating for the cost of college and lost earning years. That is an overwhelming majority.
she never even addresses the issue of enrollment now being overwhelmingly female, with majors that are money losers in the job markets.
The top Bachelors degrees with over 100k of annual degrees conferred that have more women graduates are Health Professions, Psychology, Biological and Biomedical Sciences, a
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That's news to all the grads drowning in debt they'll never pay off.
More than half of the undergraduate students graduating from my local public university have NO DEBT - none. Zero. A huge portion of the debt, when calculated for "national averages," is for students attending extremely expensive private institutions. Many public colleges remain an incredible financial bargain.
"After factoring in financial aid, the cost of attending a public four-year college has fallen by more than 20 percent since 2015, even before adjusting for inflation." What? Seriously?
Yes, that's how facts work. See, for example: https://www.forbes.com/advisor... [forbes.com]
And she never even addresses the issue of enrollment now being overwhelmingly female, with majors that are money losers in the job markets
Yes, like getting into medical school or law sch
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Who? Only 18% of Americans even have college debt, and 2/3rds of them have debt under $20k
https://battlepenguin.com/poli... [battlepenguin.com]
People should go to smaller state schools and maybe start with community college first if they're worrying about affordability. They should also pay off those loans as fast as possible, always paying back what they don't need. Finally, government subsidized student
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Should dumb people get degrees? (Score:1)
They make it sound like it's a very generic question, should all students go to college? You gotta break it down.
- Should a dumb person go to college? Maybe they will pay money but never graduate.
- Should a person go to college for a non-viable degree? Maybe they will pay but not get a job using that degree.
- Should a person who wants to work in engineering get an engineering degree?
See how there isn't one generic answer?
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"Should a person go to college for a non-viable degree? Maybe they will pay but not get a job using that degree."
I think this is one of the true failings of our current education system. And it's across the board, across many ages. Who is tracking the usefulness / applicability of classes taken and skills taught?
In High School in the US, we give diplomas to kids who were made to take geometry and algebra, but who don't understand how a loan works.
In college in the US, we give diplomas to kids who were made
So what is a non-viable degree? (Score:1)
But even ignoring that, if we have people who have successfully learned a skill and the job creators refuse to employ that person maybe, we shouldn't be relying on those job creators. Because they're not doing their fucking job of creating jobs.
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I didn't say anything about particular "degrees"... I said classes taken and skills taught.
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Hah! You think the job of the guy running the business is to "create jobs"?
Let's explore that. Suppose that you're right and that the job of Microsoft is to "create jobs". Does that mean it's the consumer's job to "Buy Microsoft"? What if Microsoft is not worth the money? Do you still have to buy their products? What if an employee is not worth the money? Do we still have to give them a job?
Does my need constitute your obligation?
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They strive to build The Everyman, but fail at the core mission more often that we'd like.
But... shouldn't they? I graduated from college in 2002. Today I run software development teams that build cloud hosted machine learning models pretty much none of which was a thing in 2002. Even if we want to imagine that college is essentially a trade school but with ivy and columns, the fact remains that your average college graduate's degree far outlives the value of most of what they're taught unless they're majoring in history.
We certainly want people to exit college with the skills they need to ei
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How many 'skills' did you learn in high school and in college that you never used again? I can name a few... Geometry proofs. The Canterbury Tales (anything to do with it). Alternate Interior Angles. Algebra (any of it).
What you are now seeing is the Employers (those people who pay for skilled work) re-evaluating what Value a college degree has to them. It used to be that if you had a degree, as an Employer, I could see a measurable increase in skills that applied directly to my need for a particular set of
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There's an old observation that people go to university for lots of different reasons. It used to be that wealthy people went there just so they could have good conversations with each other (kind of a prestige thing).
It's popular now to think of the university system as a job training, And it's kind of so-so at that depending upon what you do and how you use it.
As for the garbage they cram in your head as you pass through the mandatory schooling in the USA and other developed nations? I'm kind of glad
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I enjoyed it but probably could have put the time and money to better use.
Need an dual education system! (Score:2)
Need an dual education system!
Supply and Demand (Score:2)
The "evidence" that the article cites that the turn away from higher education is false is as follows:
1. More people are getting degrees over time
2. The amount people pay is less
I actually look at it this way: People who can afford to pay full freight now refuse to pay because the perceived value is less, so to make up the difference in enrollment, they have to discount the price to attract more people to enroll. There's also the possibility that the rigor necessary to get a degree has been reduced, in
at least 2 years of higher edu should be part of h (Score:2)
at least 2 years of higher edu should be part of high school / cost the same as it
This op-ed brought to you by ... (Score:2)
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The Atlantic Did Me Dirty [substack.com]
Rich people don't tell their kids to skip college (Score:3)
Re:Rich people don't tell their kids to skip colle (Score:5, Insightful)
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The level of [citation missing] on exhibit here is off the charts.
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Duh, that's because the cost is trivial to them and they send their kids to schools where the main thing is to meet future cronies from other rich families.
It's mainly because they need something for their kids to do for a few years before they get parachuted into a cushy job by one of their contacts.
There's a joke (from comedian Ivo Graham) about the exclusive school Eton, "I received an Eton advent calendar, its the same as a normal advent calendar except all the doors are opened by your fathers contacts".
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Re: Rich people don't tell their kids to skip coll (Score:2)
Rich people are either already rich enough that it doesn't matter or they also know to make their kids study something other than the BA in BS that most college students who don't know better end up saddled with.
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I'm upper middle class, with enough income to afford private school tuition of $14K per year, which is more than the average college tuition. Yes, that's right, the average in-state college tuition is less than $12K per year. https://www.usnews.com/educati... [usnews.com]
Anyway, we encouraged our oldest son *not* to attend college, because we knew he was not college material. He's doing just fine, installing fiber optic internet for homes and businesses. Our other son got his associate's degree at the local community co
Re:Simply do that math (Score:5, Interesting)
What? And miss the best 4 years of my life?
No, it wasn’t all party time, though there was some of that. I enjoyed the coursework, and worked reasonably hard. Harder than many, but certainly not the hardest.
What did I get out of it? Good question. Certainly not a vocation. I was liberal arts. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. After all these years, I believe the most important thing I learned was how to think and write more clearly. You might say that should be high school, and it indicates the woeful state of high school education. I’d disagree with that. Regardless of my writing skills when I got to college, it simply made me better. That would be true no matter what my baseline was.
I also offer this free advice. I got into a couple of decent name-brand schools, But for various reasons, one of which was money, I attended my state’s flagship state university. I wouldn’t change that decision for all the money in the world. Of course, there were many decidedly average folks, myself included. But I also met some of the smartest people I’ve ever known, and I can say this after a longish career in tech in some big companies and startups, all with many smart employees. And, since the student body was large, and the budget reasonably high, there was always some fairly advanced things going on, 24/7, whether you were technically minded, into politics, sports, or just looking for the next big indie band.
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College now is not the same as it was even ten years ago, let alone whenever it was when you went. Nostalgia is no substitute for rent money.
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Margin of Utility Appears to Be Declining (Score:2)
This data is more than 2 years old. While it tells us about the past, the sentiment that is measured is a better indicator of the future. After all, home sales were pretty strong right before the crash of 2008. Showing the recent popularity of a good or service doesn't disprove the existence of a bubble.
T
So many fallacies... (Score:1)
The fallacy of composition: what's good for one individual is also good for everyone at scale. Classic example: I get a better view of the stage if I stand up out of my seat, therefore everyone will get a better view if everyone stands up at the same time.
Correlation as causation fallacy: X occurs with Y, therefore X causes Y. Classic example: this rock repels tigers, here's the rock and there's no tigers around.
Superficiality fallacy: X shares some similarities with Y, therefore X is functionally identical
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Higher education useless even when free (Score:2)
Even in countries where higher education is free, I think most people would agree time would be better spent actually working.
2-year schools (Score:2)
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There are Really Several Categories... (Score:4, Insightful)
Lumping "college" together is rather misleading because there are several categories of schools that may all grant 4 year "college degrees", but provide dramatically different opportunities, charge dramatically different tuitions, and provide very different educations.
1) For profit schools (i.e. University of Phoenix) are a substantial portion of "college" degrees. While some providers may very well provide some useful education, a lot of those degrees aren't worth the paper they are written on. They are mostly vehicles to vacuum student loan money from the government and provide as little as possible in return. For profit colleges are responsible for a disproportionally large share of student loan defaults and (I strongly suspect) a large share of underemployed college graduates. To many employers, such a school on your resume is worse than none at all.
2) State schools and less-competitive privates. These are the "middle class" option that tends to define what most of the public think of as "college." Tuitions are generally reasonable (in-state), but they can still be expensive once living expenses are included if you are a full-time student. Instruction quality and post-grad opportunities vary dramatically depending on major and the individual student.
3) Elite schools (Ivy+ types). The students at these institutions are playing a different game than the others. You can major in underwater basketweaving at Harvard and go on to Goldman Sachs or McKinsey and make well into the six figures immediately after graduation. The prices are truly eye-popping, although they do offer generous need-based aid (a lot less "merit" aid than schools in the middle-class tier).
All three of these paths (they aren't totally rigid and there are schools falling somewhat between them) are so different that lumping them altogether is rather unhelpful. The sort of person deciding between going to college and becoming a welder probably isn't also weighing Yale vs. Stanford.
non-diploma-mills are rare finds now (Score:1)
Offshoring, inshoring, AI: is university worth it? (Score:2)
There are enough people in India alone to take every US job, easily.
They will offshore all they can.
If they cannot offshore, they will hire a visa worker to replace you.
It has been estimated that about half of white collar jobs will be replaced by AI.
Is that $100K debt still worth it?
Complicated. (Score:2)
The value of a degree might be depressed, and that is true. Education inflation is real. But there's a basic problem here. Having no degree bans you from a lot of jobs. You are filtered out by the AI or automated system before your CV ever hits the eyes of a human. The degree at least cracks open the door.
I have an extensive resume, with almost thirty years in critical systems, from operational programming and 24x7 support to my PMP, extensive leadership and managerial experience, successful projects up to
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An unhealthy and unwarranted expectation is the value of a degree.
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and what happens if you fake it just in away to bypass the automated system but not list that you have one.
I can tell you... (Score:2)
Their enrollment is half of what it was when I was there and it had already fallen by about 30% when I left.
Oh, so the pricing is all a lie? (Score:2)
Ignoring Job Market Impacts (Score:2)
Authoritarians don't like educated populaces... (Score:1)
Ever since Regan, the cost of a university degree has gone up ~1100%, while salaries only grew by ~30%. And the whole time, public education has been undermined, so younger people lack the critical thinking skills to follow the cause and not just the result...
Source data? (Score:2)
Perhaps the following is true “For the overwhelming majority of graduates, the returns on going to college more than offset the cost of tuition.” But that statement does not appear to factor in those who do not graduate. What is the return on investment if the entire dataset, inc
MAGA is doing great (Score:1)
The uneducated are easier to govern (Score:2)
And easier to exploit. Sure, they are also less productive, but they will not question what you do to them because they do not see it.